Changing the Code
by DuskMoon15
Summary: If you could change one thing from the past, what would it be? It's a simple hypothetical question. Not that your answer would make any difference. So ask Ratchet this question, and what do you get? A long pause followed by a cryptic answer. He would change the code. What code? Why would he change it? This describes my reasoning as to why he helped Starscream twice. One-shot.


**AN: I was half-asleep when this idea popped in my head. Remember in Orion Pax, Part 2 and in Crossfire when Ratchet fixed Starscream? Well, I think there was another reason he did it, not because the downed seeker had information, but because he had to. This one-shot explains it in greater detail.**

If Ratchet could change one thing from the past it would be the code. He was bound by it, more so than by the brand on his armor.

It wasn't just any code. It was the Medic's Code. Originally devised to protect the mechs and femmes of Cybertron and to guarantee them repair, it had since become a source of extortion and disloyalty.

Decepticons had known about the Oath taken at the end of a medic's apprenticeship and used it to force Autobots into repairing them. It was used now for evil purposes.

But in the beginning, the code had been a great idea. It bound the medics away from the war, holding them beyond rivalries and borders. But then came the time for _all_ Cybertronians to choose sides. Most medics and scientists had defected to the Autobots, where their skills were appreciated. Only a few had joined under Megatron's rule. Fewer had chosen to stay neutral.

Those that chose rebellion – for it had only been an uprising at that time – were mostly crude doctors who had been assigned to the illegal gladiatorial circuit. They had never learned much from their training.

Those that sided with Optimus were quickly overwhelmed with the injuries caused by the more battle-ready Decepticons. But they managed to do their job and get the Autobots back on their feet.

The neutrals helped those they could, finding they had no place in the war. They only wanted to do what they swore to do: fix all those injured, regardless of class or affiliation. They had been quickly killed off by Megatron's followers.

Technically, by choosing sides in the war, the medics had already violated the oath they took. But it wasn't a big deal, according to the High Council. They said medics needed to have a choice of their own.

Who would have thought they could be dead wrong?

With medics dying off in futile attempts to save comrades stranded on battlefields, it became all the more important to train new ones.

A generation before and there would have been no problem. But this was a new breed of Cybertronian: built for war, with no interest in healing or mechanics.

The Decepticons solved the problem of losing troops and medics by building drones – copies of a template mech with no individual personalities or volition – and using them as their foot soldiers. The loss of skilled warriors declined with their newly christened Vehicons dying in droves. And there was no purpose in the medics risking their sparks to repair them because there were thousands more to replace a single fallen drone.

Optimus could not have done the same. He cared too much for others, be it an emotionless drone or old friend. He simply could not be a cold-sparked as Megatron when it was clear he needed to be. So drones were not an option and he came up with a so-called solution.

That solution was to train medics to fight. Defend themselves, rather.

It worked, but the second Megatron caught on, he began doing the same. Enter Knock Out and scores of other medics as dangerous as victors from the Kaon Pit Fights. This only made the number of deaths rise.

And on Earth, and other planets such as it, Decepticons were wounded and stranded, trying to defect or go rogue. They knew the code. Some of them had even heard the oath. They knew if they could just find a medic, then they would be forced to help them.

It was blackmail, to force a medic into helping solely because they had sworn to repair all those in need.

Ratchet knew from experience; Starscream had tricked him twice into repairing him in exchange for information. But apparently the former Decepticon did not know that regardless if he had information or not, Ratchet was bound to help him.

Bound by the very same code that cost many their honor.

Choosing sides for most mechs was easy: whom do you support? But for a medic or scientist, it meant choosing between their loyalty to the oath they swore, and the knowledge that they did nothing to help.

For Ratchet it was never going to be hard. He had known Optimus since he was Orion Pax, a clerk in the Iacon Hall of Records, and knew the horrors of what Megatron was planning to enforce. He simply could not stand by when he could do something to help.

So naturally, he chose to side with the Autobots.

He was one of the first to decide. And he helped start the movement.

But he had never realized the repercussions would stretch to here and now, ten thousand years later on a distant planet three million light-years away.

So when Miko asked the question – if you could change one thing from the past, what would it be? – Ratchet immediately knew the answer.

He would change the very thing that helped start the madness and extortion.

He would change the code.


End file.
